


His Ocean

by kannstdunicht



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: And Merlin is still alive, And he's been dead, Angst, Everyone is Dead, Except Merlin, F/M, Family Dynamics, Grief/Mourning, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Metaphors, Not my best, One Shot, POV Merlin, Post-Canon, Sad, Sad Ending, Why Did I Write This?, and he's sad, arthur's dead, based on a quote, because I was sad, im not sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 07:16:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15944429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kannstdunicht/pseuds/kannstdunicht
Summary: Arthur's dead. Merlin tries to move on, despite his ocean of grief. Years pass, centuries, before he starts to lose hope.





	His Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I was sad and it lowkey sucks but here you can have it. I really do hope you like it somewhat.

_ Missing you comes in waves. Tonight, I’m drowning _

 

They said that grief was a process, a circle. To Merlin, it felt more like the ocean. Covering most of his world, sometimes far away, but other times right there and so vast it seemed to be the only thing he could see. It would recede for a while, if he was lucky for years, but sooner or later it would come crashing back and wash away all of his progress. There was beauty, there, too, in the memories, but mostly its power scared him.

 

The first years were the worst. When Camelot was still there and he still had to pretend to be okay. Then, the ocean covered him so completely he almost thought he could grow gills. He thought it would get better after, that he would forget and turn cold and empty like some others. But he couldn’t forget. Arthur’s face would always be right behind his eyes at night, soon Gaius’ and Gwen’s joined him, and the knights’. He tried to lose himself before he realized that they wouldn’t want that. So he devoted himself to helping others.

 

Slowly, he learned to live on the fragile beach that was his mind. Sometimes, he got swept up in the currents, one time he struggled to breathe in the undertow for over fifty years. But usually, he could do a good job of admiring it from afar and going about his life without the one person he had really lived for. He became a doctor, then philosopher, then artist, then scholar. He had a short time with men and women who loved him. He even fathered quite a few children, who he kept up with from afar. When he caught sight of a blond man in his peripheral, he stopped turning to bow or make a quip.

 

Merlin had been with him for five years. It was the longest he had stayed with a lover, and he kept promising himself that he would leave in a day, after tonight, just until the end of the week. He never could bring himself to. The man reminded him so strongly of Will that his breath caught sometimes, and he knew Merlin had secrets and he still looked into his eyes and said he saw the ocean in them. Merlin stayed silent. He left in the middle of the night with only a whispered word to the man in the bed. The man passed him a month later in the streets with his arm around a pretty girl and no look of recognition in his eyes. It hurt, but it was for the best, and Merlin let the ocean take him.

 

He found himself looking into the eyes of a great-granddaughter of his, eyes that looked too free to be his own, and telling her that they hadn’t met. He found himself meeting his newest family member as a friend of hers, an adopted uncle. He was her best friend for years, until she decided to take a trip across the sea and live in France. He wrote her until she died and then wrote her daughter as well. They were one of his favorite branches of his family that now had enough people he had to make charts.

 

Years and years passed, and Merlin never forgot his family, but he started becoming more reclusive. It hurt to watch everyone he loved move on, grow old, find their forever person. He spent more time by a lake in a forest that reminded him of Camelot, and god, he hadn’t thought of Gwen in years but he could still hear her laugh as she and Arthur got married. The jealousy that it wasn’t him laughing at Arthur like that was still there, even after centuries. The love was, too. And he watched the ripples on the lake and he dove deeper into his ocean.

 

He didn’t quite remember what made him leave his cottage in the woods, but when he did it was a newer world that greeted him. He took a while to adjust, would still go back to his forest often, but he did. He had kept up with his family, but not with the news of the times, and the world had seemed to expand since he’d been out with any regularity.

 

Merlin liked the twentieth century. It was a time of great progress, of innovation and of love. The year 1999 was incredible. The excitement he felt, palpable in the air, almost let him forget about a memory that his ocean kept pushing at him, of a kingdom rejoicing as a new King was crowned.

 

Everything was going downhill, the world was dying and no one seemed to care, it seemed like the hope of Arthur coming back was gone. Albion’s need was so great, and still, it wasn’t enough to bring back his king. Maybe he would never come, and Merlin was destined to live alone forever as the world plunged into darkness. He felt the ocean creeping up on him every day, more bad news, more death, less hope, less caring, and he didn’t know how long he could hold off the despair. He hadn’t thought of Arthur so much in centuries. He had forgotten what it was that Arthur liked most about him, all the unimportant day-to-day details that suddenly seemed as huge and significant as the day he had died and what had his chambers in Gaius’ rooms looked like again?

 

Merlin wished he could have as clear a memory of everything as he did Arthur, but it seemed that even though he thought it horrible to not forget, it was worse to not remember. He was floundering and he just wanted to go back. He didn’t care about indoor toilets, about the internet, he just wanted his friends back.

 

One day, Merlin went back to his forest, overwhelmed by everything. That night, he lay on his old bed and looked out of his old window to see his old lake and let the memories that he still had wash over him.

 

Yes, grief was a circle, indeed. A cycle of struggling under the waves of the ocean in his mind, of just when he couldn’t take it anymore, getting a breath, and then being shoved back under the waves of his ocean. Missing Arthur was those waves. That night, he realized he would never escape the water rushing in his ears. That night, Merlin drowned.

**Author's Note:**

> :)


End file.
